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Shanley Moves to New Home After Prison Release

Convicted pedophile priest is living in Ware, Massachusetts, after his release from prison.

(Published Friday, July 28, 2017)

A former priest at the center of Boston's Roman Catholic priest sex abuse scandal was quietly released from prison Friday morning after completing a 12-year sentence for the rape of a boy in the 1980s.

Paul Shanley, 86, was released from the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater, prison officials said. He plans to live in an apartment in Ware, a town of about 10,000 people about 65 miles west of Boston, according to the state's sex offender registry.

Prosecutors opposed his release, and several men who say they were abused by him when they were young called on the public to help them track his whereabouts. They said they are concerned Shanley will reoffend.

The registry designates Shanley a Level 3 offender, considered the most likely to reoffend. But two psychologists hired by state prosecutors cited Shanley's advanced age and his health issues in concluding that his likelihood to reoffend is low. The contradiction was cited by sexual abuse victims and their advocates.

Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represented dozens of men who said they were abused by Shanley, said the evaluations by the two psychologists were incomplete because they didn't interview Shanley. Instead, they reviewed police reports, prosecutors' files and Shanley's church personnel file containing numerous sexual abuse complaints against him.

"The fact that neither expert spoke to Paul Shanley leaves a hole in the report you could drive a trailer truck through," Garabedian said.

"Paul Shanley should be in a hospital being treated and not in the outside world where he can easily gain access to innocent children," he said.

Both psychologists found that Shanley meets the psychiatric criteria for pedophilic disorder. But they said in written reports that research suggests that recidivism rates for people of his age are extremely low. They also cited Shanley's health issues - which were redacted from the reports - and the fact that his last reported offense was in 1990.

Prosecutors sought to hold Shanley beyond his criminal sentence under a law that allows civil commitment of people deemed sexually dangerous. But the two psychologists found he did not meet the legal criteria to hold him.

Ware Police Chief Shawn Crevier said Shanley registered Friday afternoon as a sex offender with the department. He said posters will be displayed around town notifying the public that Shanley is living in the area, which is typical procedure for the department.

"We're going to do what we need to do to make sure the citizens are protected and his rights are also protected," Crevier said.

Shanley arrived at his new home on Pulaski Street shortly after 3 p.m. Friday. He had nothing to say as he walked up to his apartment.

"I'm going to cling to my granddaughter and just keep an eye on all the kids," said Sylvia Isham, a concerned neighbor.

"I'm a little nervous," added Liz Pelletier, a parent of three. "I don't like this going on in my town."

Shanley will be at least the seventh sex offender living or working on his street. State law prohibits people from using information in the registry to harass sex offenders.

Former clergy abuse victim Robert Hoatson walked Pulaski Street on Friday, vowing to make everyone aware of Shanley's whereabouts.

"The damage that Paul Shanley did to the victims is so deep and so severe that if we can be a little voice for them, you know, to speak out - because they can't," he said.

Shanley was a street priest who ministered to alienated youth in the 1960s and `70s. Dozens of men came forward decades later and said Shanley had molested or raped them. He was defrocked by the Vatican in 2004 and was convicted of raping a boy at a Newton parish in 2005.

The Archdiocese of Boston said this week it will not provide Shanley with financial support or benefits. Republican Gov. Charlie Baker said he will review the standards for civilly committing convicted sex offenders who have served their prison sentences.

Shanley's appellate lawyer said he's served his time and is not dangerous.

"We've never believed that he was dangerous, and we didn't believe that what he was convicted of was a valid conviction, given that it rested on repressed memory evidence that we did not believe was valid," attorney Robert Shaw Jr. said earlier this week.

Reporting by the Boston Globe's Spotlight team helped break open the priest sex abuse scandal in the Boston Archdiocese in 2002. The reporting uncovered how dozens of priests in the archdiocese had molested and raped children for decades while church higher-ups covered it up and shuffled abusive priests from parish to parish.

Paul Shanley.
Photo credit: Ware Police

A movie about the Globe's reporting, called "Spotlight," won the 2016 Academy Award for best picture.